Supper. A pang of dread and hunger shot through him. Soon it would be night, and he had no gun and no shelter and no idea when the monster would be back for him, and he absolutely had to eat.
So Elim leaned over the pond and drank as much as his stomach could hold, the cold water outlining every inch of his puckered guts on its way down. That would do for a start.
Then he clambered up out of the little valley and followed the creek down through the foothills – because it ran to the river, and the river was where he’d left Bootjack and Way-Say and Hawkeye, and they were Sundowners but at least they were human, and God almighty, he would throw his lot back in with them in a barn-burning minute if it meant escaping the monster and the fishman and whatever other devil-spawned hellraisers lived out here.
So he kept his human hand clapped over his horsey eye and his other arm wrapped over his stomach, and did his utmost to ignore the ravening thing inside him. He’d never felt such an unholy hunger. It was like an unending punch in the gut, like a heart attack twelve inches too low, and fear did nothing to fill it up or drown it out as he stumbled along trying to calculate how long it would take to starve to death, and whether and how you felt it coming.
He hadn’t wondered about that since... why, not since he was five years old, not since he’d been small enough to hunch over a wash-bucket, scrubbing and scouring and already knowing that he wouldn’t get a seat at the table with the other children, because you had to have clean hands to eat at the table, and Elim’s hands were never, ever clean. He curled his right one into a head-sized hard fist, imagining what Ma’am would think of it now.
But it didn’t matter, did it? It hadn’t mattered for twenty years. He was twenty years bought, twenty years saved, twenty years fed and taught and wanted. All he had to do was put himself back in his rightful place. All he had to do was go home.
At some point, his monstrous fist unclenched and moved up to clutch the pale, scarred horseshoe ‘C’ over his left arm – and thank God it was still there. The dog-monster must have hexed away his burns and wounds and bruises while he was asleep, but she couldn’t erase Calvert’s brand.
So Elim held it tight as he worked to whittle wash-bucket starvation back into plain old hard-work hunger, the kind he felt after he’d come in from the barn, pulled off his hat, washed his face and hands – just once, just like anybody would – and sat down to supper. He remembered the table and the linens and the parts of Boss and Lady Jane’s wedding crockery that were still fit for use, because Lady Jane didn’t believe in saving anything for best – or rather, didn’t believe that a workaday meal with her family was anything but best. He remembered fresh garden greens and ripe summer strawberries, creamy white milk and the hot corn-bread he liked to pour it over. He remembered clasping his hands for the grace.
And by the time Elim had finished recollecting all that, his two bare feet were stumbling in tandem over the rocks, and his two human eyes agreed perfectly on the color and clarity of the world, and he was himself again.
Or rather to say: he was himself again, standing in front of the monster’s cave, and staring at the fishman’s rock-smashed remains.
“A LITTLE FARTHER,” Día coaxed again, with an entreating tug of U’ru’s hand. “Let’s go just a little bit farther.”
The doubt flowering in Día’s mind was mirrored by the hesitation in the Dog Lady’s dark eyes. She wasn’t badly wounded anymore – Día couldn’t see her ribs under that coat of hers, but her foot had taken less than an hour to heal – and yet she seemed to dread going further up the trail.
Stay, she answered, and made to sit down. Wait here.
Día worked hard not to sound as impatient as she felt. “Yes,” she said, “but we don’t know who still might be trying to hurt us, and it’s very important that we find Miss du Chenne.” And it was going to be dark soon, and Día absolutely did not want to spend the night on Marhuk’s mountain.
The Dog Lady’s thoughts turned cold at the mention of Miss du Chenne, and some small, petty thing in Día fed itself with the knowledge that she wasn’t the only one with a less-than-pleasant opinion of the old schoolmistress.
Bad, U’ru thought with a glance up at the mountain’s nearest ridges. Crows were gathering in the branches of the piñon trees. Not welcome.
“Yes,” Día said again, struggling to measure her temper along with her words, “and that’s why we have to keep going. The other trail will meet us right up there, you see,” and pointed to the little crossroads about a hundred yards up and to the east, “and then we can use it to get back down again, and that way we won’t stay to trespass where we aren’t wanted.”
The Dog Lady didn’t follow her gesture. She clutched her robe with her free hand, like a child making an anxious wad of its pinafore, and her gaze wandered back out to the foothills below and behind them. Puppy. Lost puppy.
Día had had just about enough of ‘puppy’. She was cold and footsore and thirsty, had been lectured and berated and slandered, nearly gotten herself killed and possibly abetted the deaths of a dozen others – she still didn’t understand how that had happened – and for what? For this ageless, witless, tyrannical toddler here? For ‘puppy’?
“Soon,” she said, striving to remember that it wasn’t the Dog Lady who’d abandoned Día outside Island Town – not the Dog Lady who’d made her wander in the heat. That was all Halfwick’s doing.
But it was the Dog Lady, or at least the mother dog, who had stayed with Día through days of blistering madness and nights of shivering fear, who had guarded her and nursed her and kept her alive and safe through every trial. Now she needed the favor returned, like a frail parent reaching out to steady themselves on the arm of a grown child.
And Día would not fail her. “We’ll take the other trail back down to the place where he’s sleeping. I know where it is.” She did not let herself picture Elim’s current state, but focused her thoughts on the stone valley with the little green-ringed pool, and how safe and nice it was, and how well she would be able to take them there, if only U’ru would trust her to lead.
And she did, or at least her feet kept moving.
So Día kept thinking of confidence and certainty, and talked to reinforce it as she led U’ru – as she led her friend up the darkening mountain slope, keeping her voice strong to smother the disconcerting cawing of the crows. “It won’t take us nearly as long to get down as it did to get up here, and I still have a little something we can eat if you’re hungry, and as soon as we –”
Día registered the sudden tightening of U’ru’s grip, half a second before a feathered missile crashed into the back of her head. Its claws tangled in her dreadlocks as it flapped and twisted, but Día didn’t even have time to reach up for it before another one slammed shrieking into her face, and then another, and another, and suddenly the world was a cacophony of scratching talons and beating wings and caah-caah-caah.
Día screamed and bent to shield her eyes, her feet instinctively scorching the dirt and leaving her coughing, choking on acrid earth-smoke as she stumbled blindly backwards –
– and then a hand took a solid hold of her arm and pulled her back from the edge. She was led stumbling down the trail, down and further down until finally – mercifully! – the crows broke off their assault. The scratching and pecking stopped, and the cawing died away soon after. Soon the last stragglers had flown off, and there was nobody left but U’ru and Día, together and safe... somewhat.
“WHAT WAS THAT FOR?” Día shrieked at the sky, shouting to squelch the overpowering urge to cry. “We didn’t – we weren’t hurting anyone!”
Bad, U’ru thought again, and Día belatedly noticed that they’d gotten her too: her long black hair was even more of a tangled mess, her plump face marred by fresh red scratches. Not welcome.
But in spite of her injuries, her thoughts were calm and rational, which left Día’s at liberty to be neither. “I don’t care!” she cried. “He didn’t care when the mereaux were lining up to
kill us – he didn’t care when half that hill dropped on them – he didn’t care when you or I or Miss du Chenne were running helter-skelter anywhere else today – so why in heaven’s name does he want to pick a fight now?”
U’ru’s eyes wandered up to the ridge above them, the crow-laden trees silhouetted in the red light of sunset. But her mind went to a much deeper place, and though Día didn’t catch more than a flicker of a feeling – of violence and grief and remorse – it was enough to remind her of Weisei’s story, and the grim, matter-of-fact set to his voice.
Every sunrise, an a’Krah would be killed and the body buried upside-down in the ground, and this would continue until the infant was returned.
Día put a hand to her mouth, scarcely noticing as it came away smeared with blood. “You... you’ve made enemies of everyone.” All the a’Krah she had killed... the mereaux she had somehow gotten killed... and Miss du Chenne, probably the only person within fifty miles that didn’t actively hate her, was persona non grata. Who was left? Who was going to help them now?
Día stared at the thin streak of blood on her fingers, chilled to her core at its implications. Marhuk had made no distinction between the two of them, and any mereaux left alive wouldn’t either. Día had already had her chance, and she had chosen to leave Vuchak and Weisei behind, to throw her lot in with this – this creature, this guileless doe-eyed monster, who didn’t understand anything but love and babies and slaughter. As far as the world out here was concerned, Día belonged to her now, and there was no going back.
She couldn’t tell how much of that U’ru understood. There was some dim confusion from her, a faint, reciprocal anguish echoing from Día’s own thoughts. But she perked up at the idea of belonging, of permanence, and reached out to enfold her troubled puppy in warmth and reassurance: she was part of the tribe now, the newest member of a vast, deathless family, and her love-mother would always be there to care for her.
Día, who could neither resist nor be comforted, felt herself pulled down to a seat. She sat there on the cold ground, her back against a stone and her front facing a wall of furry brown certainty, and looked up in a dull-eyed daze. “What now? What are we supposed to do now?”
Maternal pleasantness bloomed in her mind, accompanied by a lip-popping pip-pip-pip that Día could only guess was a hush-noise for someone without a tongue. It was the first sound she’d heard from U’ru’s own mouth. Stay, she repeated. Wait here.
So the Dog Lady’s newest disciple sat and stayed, nestled amidst the mountain’s cold and darkening crags as her hair was petted and her wounds kissed, and did not think any more about anything.
THAT WASN’T CHAMPAGNE. Elim stared at the wet corpse until he was sure of it. Not at its head – not at what the rock had left of its head – but at its long, webbed toes and wide, flat tail. This was a fishman, but not the fishman – not the tailless, toeless old hellbender who had gone spouting off about dog-mothers and gratitude and then duped him into eating hemlock. There was no telling where that snake-bellied swindler had run off to, except that maybe, hopefully, it had taken the monster with it.
Or maybe the two of them were still here. It had been as dark as the Sibyl’s shit-pit last time Elim passed this way, but he was middling sure that that big spilled hill hadn’t been there before... and judging by the stray limbs protruding here and there, there were probably a whole passel of people whom it had taken by surprise.
Elim shivered in the cool mountain air. He needed his gun, that was what – and then he needed to light a shuck out of here.
So after a thorough inspection of the cave’s narrow mouth, he lay down and wormed his way inside. It was just a little pocket in the rock, hardly enough for two people to lie down in – but sure enough, there was his gun and his poncho and the moccasin-shoes Way-Say had made for him. Even the net the fishmen had used to haul him away.
Perfect. And more perfect still, the crows had already descended on the bodies.
Elim quashed a pang of anxiety as he dragged himself around to lie on his stomach and sighted through the low opening in the rock. He knew this was the crow god’s land, and that he might not take kindly to visitors picking off his black-feathered friends. At any other time, that might have been enough to put Elim off the idea: he’d already shot the old croaker’s son – or maybe grandson – and didn’t need any more help making enemies.
But there was nothing else to hand, and no promise of another opportunity, and at the end of the day, Elim didn’t belong to the crow god, or to the fishmen, or to any monstrous furry mothers who might or might not be some blood relation of his. He belonged to Boss and Lady Jane, and he was going to do what it took to go home.
So he lay flat on his stomach, with his rifle at his shoulder and his elbows level on the ground. He sighted down the barrel with his right eye, and waited in stillness until the crows descended again on that rock-smashed body outside. They were huge, too, bigger than any Elim had ever seen. But their beady eyes and black flapping wings and hideous croaking caah-caah-caah promised him that these were animals in the truest sense of the word, living and lawful according to God’s covenant, and Elim felt no remorse as he steadied his aim and pulled the trigger.
Nothing happened.
Well, hold on: if it wasn’t loaded, then why was it already cocked and set? Elim cracked the barrel to check –
– and was nearly blinded by the belated hangfire CRACK as the rifle discharged into the ground, blasting dirt into his eyes and sending a wild ricochet into the rock overhead.
“GoddammitsonofaBITCH,” he swore, dropping the gun and clutching his face, thanking God’s infinite mercy that the ricochet hadn’t ended with a bullet in his skull. What kind of idiot just grabbed his gun and fired? What kind of neckless, nutless deep-fried pie-biter snatched up a rifle that had been dropped in the river and scratched his trigger-finger without so much as a cursory once-over?
A stupid one, that was what. Elim sniffed and wiped his face on his arm, massaging his eyes ’til they’d washed out the worst of the dirt. Then he picked up the rifle to do what he should have done the first time... somehow.
Then the grim realization hit him. Nevermind what he was going to clean it with – what the dickens was he going to load it with?
Elim set it down and felt over the ground, twisting and turning to search over every last musty corner, but the little bag of bullets was nowhere to be found. Hadn’t Bootjack given it to him before they got to the river? Hadn’t he had it before?
He writhed and shifted in the tiny crawlspace, shaking out the poncho, emptying out his shoes, pressing the back of his head flat up against the inches-low ceiling to try and feel a telltale lump underneath him. But regardless of whether the fishman had stolen it or Elim had dropped it or it was sitting at the bottom of the river, he was left in the same dire fix: alone and starving, with nothing but the clothes on his back and an empty, useless gun.
Elim lay there in the barren dirt, stunned to utter stillness.
Boss had taught him how to shoot, and fish, and clean what he killed. He hadn’t taught him how to feed himself with nothing but his own bare hands. He had no hook or line, nothing to make a snare with, not so much as a pocket-knife to his name. He had nothing, not even the know-how to figure out which of all those alien weeds wouldn’t leave him retching himself blind again – or worse.
Elim’s eye caught again on the fishman’s corpse, the clamor of the gunshot having evicted the crows. An evil genius took root in his mind.
If he didn’t have the means to kill something, he might just have to make do with what was already dead.
No, no – that was a person – not a human, but a person, or had been – and he didn’t have to consult the Verses to know what God would think of that. He would go find his Sundowners, that was what. He would just get up and go find them, just like he’d planned.
So Elim flattened and pushed and eased himself out from the little cave, and then reached back in to extricate his supplies.
He put on his moccasin-shoes and his poncho and took up the net too, just in case he might could use it to catch something in the river.
And then he went. Around the wet limbs sticking out from under the landslide, through the steep shadows of the mountain’s foot, towards the river and the oncoming night.
Even though he wouldn’t be able to see for beans in the dark.
Even though the frog-monster and the dog-monster were still out there somewhere, and who knew what else besides.
Even though Bootjack and Way-Say and Hawkeye were already dead, for all he knew – even though he’d watched them being swarmed over by murderous fishmen – and the only thing dumber than staying here was going out to crash and stumble around in the dark, unarmed and ignorant and advertising himself to every evil thing that lived in these hills, or happened to be passing through.
Elim stopped, not twenty paces from where he’d started. What the hell was he thinking?
His gut erupted with another stricken gurgle. He smothered it with his free hand, as if to silence it before it gave them both away. It was a strange thing to put his hand to his stomach and feel nothing but skin and muscle and the sag of his pants. The little paunch he’d left home with was all gone – all Lady Jane’s biscuit-and-buttermilk breakfasts vanished as if he’d never tasted them – and he had nothing, was nothing, but fear and indecision an urgent, animal need.
He had to go – go find help, go feed himself.
He couldn’t go. It would be dark soon.
He had to stay – at least for tonight.
Dreams of the Eaten Page 12
